Meta

Community Media

New York City

EVC is a not-for-profit media arts center that teaches documentary video production and media analysis to youth, educators, and community organizers. EVC’s mission is dedicated to the creative and community-based use of video and multi-media as a means to develop the literary, research, public speaking and work preparation skills of at-risk youth.

Children’s Media Project, founded in 1994 is a media center in downtown Poughkeepsie, NY that offers media production workshops, media education exhibitions and the Digital Cafe_ film series; all free for local youth and adults. They’re committed to giving young people the necessary tools for creative self expression to advocate for themselves and to critically analyze media. By mixing artists, social activists and educators across generations, they provide many opportunities for dialogue and learning.

Their producers’ work is distributed through local public access channels in the CMP-TV series, and at the Hamptons International Film Festival as part of the “Young Videomakers”, a program featuring youth produced media from across the country and curated by CMP. PSAs created by their producers are broadcast on cable television throughout Dutchess County as part of an ongoing tobacco-use prevention campaign funded by the Dutchess County Children’s Health Initiative.

The Children’s Museum of Manhattan works intensively with at risk youth, including teen parents and high school students from underserved communities. The Museum also welcomes youth though school and after-school programs and through partnerships with other community organizations. The museum itself is equipped with a fully developed television studio called the Time Warner Media Center, where CMOM youth produce their programs, What’s News, Buyer Beware and Violence and TV.

Since 1972 DCTV has provided workshops and programs for schools and community centers which serve economically disadvantaged students. This training helps youth to assess television programs and to produce television that reflects their experience of the world. It also helps the students become strong interpreters of culture, rather than passive receivers of information. DCTV programs include Video Based Literacy, Envision-TV and Pro-TV. Through a partnership with the James Baldwin Literacy Center and the Frederick Douglas Center – alternative schools which prepare immigrants and minority students to move to High School Equivalency Programs and job-training centers – DCTV trains over 30 students a year. The 40 students enrolled at Envision-TV come from Help-Bronx Crotona and Amboy Neighborhood Center, temporary housing facilities that offer shelter and job training to homeless families in Bronx and Brooklyn. Pro-TV, the Professional Television Training Program gives 6-8 motivated and economically disadvantaged high school students a rigorous training in media arts. Students attending DCTV programs produce documentaries and PSAs. In addition to numerous public screenings, DCTV sponsors the Urban Visionaries youth video festival. DCTV works are aired biweekly on Manhattan Neighborhood Network.

G.A.P. is a media arts organization that provides training and workshops in video production and new media technologies for economically disadvantaged young artists and promotes the inclusion of diverse youth voices on critical local and global issues.

While their production teams travel the world making documentaries from a youth perspective, back home the producers are creating video and web banner messages for Listen Up!

G.A.P. productions are seen every month on their cable access television show and they are one of the primary organizers of the Urban Visionaries Youth Media Festival.

HarlemLive is a state-of-the-art news and cultural web magazine that has received domestic and international recognition from Washington, D.C. to Sweden and Rome. The program helps teens maintain a positive sense of cultural identity that helps them become economically self sufficient, well-educated, self-assured, and contributing members of society with an active interest in their local community.

The House of Frame by Frame Fierce is an artist-run organization dedicated to using animation as a form of artistic activism for at-risk youth. Since 2000, they’ve been teaching animation workshops to street-involved and runaway youth within the Creative Arts Therapy department at Safe Space Homeless Youth Services, as well as Safe Home, a transitional residence for homeless youth with HIV. In the workshop, youth producers learn how to use cutout animation to create images and stories which represent themselves and their very unique experiences, both of which are absent within mainstream media. Animation gives youth producers the freedom to walk the border between reality and fantasy, allowing them to communicate powerful and difficult messages with creativity and humor.

The 2000 series of Safe Space youth-produced PSAs revolve around teen pregnancy, youth prostitution, drugs and alcohol use, depression, and homelessness. The 2001 series of PSAs explores the hopes and dreams of homeless youth, self-esteem, stereotypes and ignorance, as well as environmental issues and the power of creativity. The House’s most recent project, Frame by Frame Fierce, a series of 4 queer youth conceived PSAs about HIV, premiered at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art on World AIDS Day, December 1.

The mission of TRUCE (The Rheedlen University for Community Education) is to support the personal development of the teenagers (ages 12-19) in the Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ). The HCZ is a community-building initiative of the Rheedlen Centers for Children and Families, which aims to create positive opportunities and outcomes for all children living in a 24-block area in Central Harlem, New York. As a community, TRUCE is dedicated to supporting the artistic, journalistic and entrepreneurial growth, self-expression, academic success, technical skills, career readiness, multicultural awareness and community service spirit through arts education and media literacy. TRUCE aims to foster young minds capable of thinking critically, analyzing and deconstructing the various forms of media in their lives.

TRUCE has distributed to and shown our youth-produced videos in national and international video festivals, community and grassroots organizations, museums and other art institutions, television stations and in a variety of conferences and youth leadership workshops. Additionally, The Real Deal, a youth-produced public access television show, airs every other Friday and Saturday on Manhattan Neighborhood Network on Channels 34 and 57. TRUCE has established media contacts with a variety of media outlets including Showtime Networks, HBO, MTV, PBS, WNET, ABC-TV and other international media.

EPTV is a Brooklyn, NY based youth production team that tackles serious issues, such as sweatshops and illness caused by polution. Closely tied to “El Puente”, a coalition of three peace and justice community centers, EPTV produces videos that represent young people’s involvement in their community. EPTV’s work has been seen internationally at their screening at the Hague Youth Video Festival.

EPTV participates in the annual Urban Visionaries Youth Video Festival, which showcases media work produced by young people in New York City, by hosting one screening in their community.

Western New York

Squeaky Wheel / Buffalo Media Resources is a grassroots, artist-run, non-profit media arts center founded in 1985 to promote and support film, video, computer, digital, and audio art by media artists and community members. The Buffalo Youth Media Institute is an eight-week program where students produce documentaries exploring the local community, guided by local filmmakers and a mentorship team of community partners.